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Going, Going… Gone Digital!
April 28, 2005 | 0 comments
TAS Live
A Conversation With Irving Kristol
In honor of Irving Kristol, who died today, we reprint this discussion about the state of liberalism, from our May 1969 issue.
The following article was published in the May 1969 edition of The Alternative (as The American Spectator was then known).
Irving Kristol, co-editor of the Public Interest with Daniel Patrick Moynihan, is one of those stalwart Liberals who answers the call to truth even when it entails disturbing the fustian of the Realm. Recently he has, through his persuasive prose, impaled more than a few of the Republic’s leading quacks. In Foreign Affairs he transfixed a whole genre of charlatans by defining the intellectual as “a man who speaks with general authority about a subject on which he has no particular competence.” Combining effrontery with obscenity he maculated the pages of the New Republic with a thoughtful essay endorsing Hubert Humphrey’s candidacy and but a few months later uttered the unmentionable: to wit, the country is moving to the right and the universities are a blight on education in America. The stars had fallen from the heavens, even Irving Howe expressed concern. Had Irving Kristol thrown in with the Albigensians?
We doubt it. Mr. Kristol still seeks the dilation of opportunity and a more bearable life for all. He is still a Liberal. But he is also a man possessing the intelligence and audacity to look for answers beyond the encumbrances of stylish ideology. It is not he but “the intellectuals” who have changed, making anti-intellectualism the sought after epithet of thinking men.
The Alternative greatly admires Mr. Kristol. We assume his life has its unpleasant moments such as when, in his kindness, he grants interviews to people like our editor, Mr. Tyrrell. But things could always be worse, we could have sent Nathan.
TYRRELL: Before the 1968 election, you said you saw the future of American politics as being “considerably less liberal than in past decades.” Do you still have this view and is Nixon the fulfillment of your vision? Or will things go farther to the right?
KRISTOL: Yes, I still have that view, though I wasn’t thinking specifically of Nixon or of this administration when I made that prediction. I was looking much further ahead. Basically, what I was trying to say was that any kind of militance — especially extralegal activity — on the part of the left in this country will certainly give rise to a corresponding reaction on the part of the public at large and the governmental authorities. In short I think it likely that even liberal administrations of the future are likely to be far less liberal than they have been in the past.
TYRRELL: Do you think a Wallace type has a
chance of getting elected in 1972?
KRISTOL: No, certainly not in 1972. I see no prospect of
that whatsoever.
TYRRELL: You have remarked on the emergence of an “unreasonable revolution of Utopian expectations on the part of a significant minority.” Has that minority yet emerged and who constitutes it? How will it exist in the future?
KRISTOL: I was thinking, of course, primarily of
students and some faculty on the campuses. These are people, who
not only have had no political experience
— one really couldn’t expect them to have had political
experience — but who have a singular unwillingness and uninterest
in learning from past political experience and therefore have no
sense of the limits of politics. They have no sense of the time
that is needed to make constructive social change. They have no
sense of the way in which human purposes go awry. These people
demand instant improvement and of course you never do get instant
improvement in real life. What was your other question?
TYRRELL: Who are they exactly? SDS (Students for
Democratic
Society) ?
KRISTOL: Well, not only SDS, although of course SDS is one of the groups. But I think you have a much larger group, of students and faculty both, who have an insistence that this country change in a radical way very, very quickly. Unfortunately they seem to have no method for changing the people who live in this country overnight in a very radical and quick way, and therefore I regard their plans as Utopian.
TYRRELL: Do you think it has to change radically?
KRISTOL: I don’t know whether it has to or not; I don’t think anyone really knows. Much of their dissatisfaction is mysterious to me. Some of their dissatisfaction I understand. This is not the most beautiful of all societies and this is not even the most civilized of all societies. On the other hand, it is what it is as a result of several hundred years of history. The people who live in it are what they are as a result of these hundreds of years of history. The notion that you can change things overnight strikes me as utterly fantastic.
TYRRELL: How are they going to exist in the future? Are Wallace types going to repress them?
KRISTOL: Oh, I’m not really worried about the
Wallace type. I mean I don’t see any specter of Neo-fascism on
the American horizon. What I do see, however, is that if they
insist on being militant and resorting to extralegal activities,
they will probably be put down, not by Wallace, but even by a
liberal administration.
TYRRELL: You have stated that the church and the family
have neglected transmitting moral authority and traditions. How
has America, as you said, “progressively diminished the moral
authority of all existing institutions?” Through the inclination
of relativism?
KRISTOL: Well, that’s one part of it, yes. Let’s put it in its simplest terms. We did it because that’s what we set out to do. The modern spirit of critical inquiry as it developed, not only within the universities, but within the world of letters and within the world of journalism over the past eighty years, had as its purpose precisely that: the diminishing of the authority of existing institutions, and most especially of the family and of the schools and of the churches. If you go back to Jane Addams, who was a very sweet woman, and read her works you will find that she very expressedly declared that one of her purposes was to diminish the authority of the family and replace it by the authority of the social work profession and the state and so on. So that I don’t think this was entirely an accident — though, I do think a great many people didn’t realize what was happening. But there was a theory behind this, and the theory was that if you diminish these traditional authorities, a latent and hitherto repressed creativity and goodness and sweetness would flow from human beings. These people were Utopian (not particularly radical people, like John Dewey, Jane Addams, the entire progressive movement in academic studies the “new realism” in law, the “new history” and of course they contributed to the prevalence of relativism as philosophy. They really did feel that these authorities could be dispensed with, that if you got rid of them, human beings would live much fuller and happier and more contented lives without the benefits of external authority, that a sense of free community could flow from their innermost souls. It was a very attractive vision which is one of the reasons it had so much success. So that it’s a historical process (partly of course it’s a sociological process, I’ve not mentioned that; the fact that certain economic developments have made the family, as an economic unit, weaker than it once was). But basically I really do think this was a program of, one might almost say, the modern world, since very few people opposed it. It was the program of modern liberalism and even of much of modem conservatism. And no one expected it to have such cataclysmic consequences.
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Interested Conservative| 9.18.09 @ 6:40PM
"But I don't think anyone, young or old, has the right to be mindless. I think they must analyze the causes of the condition they seek to cure and the consequences of the cures they recommend. And what alarms me about the new left is that it is the politics of expressionism."
And there you have Obamism in whole, prophesied two score years ago.
PS - love the coinage "darlingized". Very perky and Couricish!
Nick| 9.18.09 @ 8:15PM
I was a year and a half old when this interview took place.
And since I received my education of this period through the mediums of television and movies, which means I got the left-wing spin/lies growing up, I am always struck by how much we are arguing about the same things we were 40 years ago.
Or is it just that the left is using the same, lame talking points. More precisely, they don't have the intellect to come up with new arguments.
That's what the late Mr. Kristol seems to have said about the new left 40 years ago.
R.I.P., and my prayers to his family.
Alan Brooks| 9.18.09 @ 8:21PM
"This is not the most beautiful of all societies and this is not even the most civilized of all societies. "
Scandinavia is the most "civilized" of all 'societies';
but globalization will seep in and ruin Scandinavia like everywhere else.
Pingback| 9.18.09 @ 8:35PM
Twitter Trackbacks for The American Spectator : A Conversation With Irving Kristol [ links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Alan Brooks| 9.18.09 @ 8:36PM
Kristol and I have-- had-- much in common, because of our backgrounds we saw Communists close up, and at best they are unintentionally destructive; at worst they are genocidal.
Mary Louise| 9.18.09 @ 9:32PM
But basically I really do think this was a program of, one might almost say, the modern world, since very few people opposed it. It was the program of modern liberalism and even of much of modem conservatism. And no one expected it to have such cataclysmic consequences.
I think Moynihan did expect it to have such cataclysmic consequences. IIRC, he lamented the hapless matriarchal state of the black family around this time. Who really couldn't see that a home without a Dad would find that Mom and child looking for the head of the family elsewhere?
In a Country where women had greater freedom than in other parts of the world, these women seemed to despise their men and then their men grew to despise them in return.
Mary Louise| 9.18.09 @ 10:49PM
Contentions opens up the Vault.
"When I taught a graduate seminar in social thought, my classes tended to be dominated by young Marxists and quasi-Marxists. We used to read The Communist Manifesto, in which Marx launches a vitriolic attack on the bourgeois family as an institution of legalized prostitution for the unfortunate wives. I once asked my students what they thought of these remarks but got no response—it was clear that they preferred not to think about them, though they regarded The Communist Manifesto as a kind of scripture. I then asked whether they thought their mothers were prostitutes. An uneasy and baffled silence ensued. What I found and still find fascinating is less the fact that no one had the courage to say “yes” than the fact that no one had the courage to say “no.” Keeping their Marxism intact was obviously more important to them than anything else."
Mary Louise| 9.19.09 @ 10:53AM
More from Link text. Isn’t it wonderful to have lived a life that causes so many people to miss you?
I’m grateful to his wife too, she helped me understand something extremely important and integral.
From linked piece:
***The Third World uses the UN when it can, ignores it when convenient. So do the Soviet Union and the other Communist countries. There is no “community of nations,” and the grand principles of the UN Charter are cynically abused for the purposes of Realpolitik. The United States is being forced to choose between being an active, great power in the world as it exists, or gradually retiring into a quasi-isolationism that leaves our moral purity undefiled and the world to its own devices.
The Democratic party today, and especially its most liberal wing, is clearly moving toward this second alternative. It is a movement made all the easier by the unspoken (because uneasy) liberal assumption that left-wing totalitarian movements, paying lip-service to principles that have a superficial affinity with liberal ideas, will evolve into less totalitarian and more liberal regimes. This assumption flies in the face of the fact that the most evident political reality of the 20th century is the revolt against the liberal economic and political order and the liberal ideal of self-government. That this revolt is sometimes explicitly “reactionary” or sometimes “progressive” in its political metaphysics is of interest to historians of ideas, but has little bearing on the construction of foreign policy. Indeed, what is most striking in recent decades is the convergence between yesteryear's totalitarian governments of the Right and today's totalitarian regimes of the Left. The similarities between Castro's Cuba and Mussolini's Italy are far more striking than their differences.***
In the same piece he writes this:
***One can muddle through with such incoherence and schizophrenia for a while, but sooner or later the world demands that one talk sense.***
I think it’s so beautiful, and of the same great cast of mind as this from Bibi’s recent speech in which he gives us the words of Theodor Herzl. Emphasis is mine
***In his speech at the Zionist Congress in Basel, in speaking of his grand vision of a Jewish homeland for the Jewish People, Theodor Herzl, the visionary of the State of Israel, said: This is so big, we must talk about it only in the simplest words possible.***
Neal Freeman| 9.19.09 @ 10:53AM
Just one story about Irving. Back in the Nixon days, Irving and I found ourselves quarantined as "the conservatives" on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting board. We were outnumbered 13 to two. The general atmosphere in which public TV operated was even m0re skewed: among the cultural elites, Nixon's standing was somewhere between, oh, Beck and Palin. At a funding meeting one day, we sat through a long presentation of upcoming specials and series, many of them of the "The Rosenberg Case Reconsidered" or "The Rape of Our Planet" stripe. When the Chairman asked for comments, Irving tossed his thick binder to the middle of the conference table, smiled and said, "It's a catalog of liberal chic. Record me as voting against all of it." The meeting ended in chaos, which was pretty much all we could hope for. In many ways over many years, Irving was the indispensable man.
S.L. Toddard| 9.19.09 @ 11:31AM
It is sad that we don't have so many important, influential intellectuals anymore. I believe Kristol's ideas have done profound, perhaps irreversible damage to America and her institutions. But we were once a country that seriously considered ideas. Where people whose job it was to think deeply had influence. It's sad that that's no longer the case. People who have run out of ideas do not last much longer.
Rest in peace, Irving Kristol.
John II| 9.19.09 @ 3:58PM
Yes, for sure: a gentle RIP for Irving K.
Yet allow me nonetheless to attempt the daunting task of cheering you up, Toddard, if you'll allow me to avoid the term "intellectual." I prefer the term "thinker," since "intellectual" has about it the smell of the French philosophe. I learned to avoid the term after reading Thomas Molnar's 1961 take-down of the species--and by the way, I think Molnar is still alive. So perhaps you can add him to the following very partial list:
Nicholas Eberstadt
Robert P. George
Leon R. Kass
Irwin Stelzer
Martin Feldstein
Kay Hymowitz
Wilfred M. McClay
Diani Schaub
James Q. Wilson
R.R. Reno
Hadley Arkes
Midge Decter
Mary Ann Glendon
Russell Hittinger
Michael Novak
George Weigel
Robert Louis Wilken
Yuval Levin
James Nuechterlein
David B. Hart
Charles Murray
Bradford Wilcox
J. Budziszewski
Roger Scruton (a Brit with Americano influence)
Victor Davis Hanson
Joseph Bottum
James V. Schall . . .
. . . well, I hope you get the drift. I could go on, and I apologize for not alphabetizing the partial list, but hey, those names just popped off the top of my noggin, for I'm in a hurry to cheer you up.
If you were more cooperative, however, you would view and then let me know your take on "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein." After all, I've given you MY take on "Red Dawn."
megapotamus | 9.20.09 @ 5:32AM
"An intellectual is someone who speaks with general authority on topics in which he has no specific competence." Irving Kristol
Ken (Old Texican)| 9.20.09 @ 9:50AM
Spectator
Thank you for that nice article. Truly a gentle man.
Also, Spectator, thank you for giving us a venue for an exchange of ideas.
I have read some brilliant thought in your ongoing cornucopia of articles, but also from many of your commenters here. I have literally a book sized document of copy/pastes from them so I won't let remarkable thoughts slip through my fingers.
As I am sure you have noted, T.E.A.M. AMERICA
is a result of some of your brightest commenters getting in touch "off site". The neatest aspect of that is that those particular folks have a penchant for ACTION rather than mere observation.
You also have of course the requisite sprinkling of puffers, crushing bores, and condescending idiots, but that must be expected with the wide net you have spread. Heh!
We on the Team have been in contact with a number of State Republican party "headquarterses'" worker bees and have identified a lot of "conservative" young candidates with a lot of promise.
We have also connected a lot of tea party groups and given them some direct action ideas they seem to like.
Mr. Tyrell, I hope you will drop in to our blog site.
and peek at Our "inaugural" article, and also click the "about" button and get a glimpse of our mission statement. http://judgeroy.wordpress.com
Highest regards from all of us
Alan Brooks| 9.21.09 @ 12:21AM
He has other things to do than drop in to your blog. People are busy thinking about their own lives.
Commenters are just flies at the barbeque.
S.L. Toddard| 9.21.09 @ 11:20AM
The story of Irv Kristol and neoconservatism is nothing less than the story of how the Right transformed itself from the anti-authoritarian, anti-statist Right of the first half of the 20th century to the hyper-statist Authority-fetishizers of today:
…In any case, the lasting legacy of Irving Kristol is that he was instrumental in turning the conservative movement away from its radical anti-statism and toward an almost exclusive concentration on the moral imperative of an aggressively interventionist foreign policy. His followers and epigones, who carry on the work in his wake, are the warmongers at the Weekly Standard and the Limbaugh-Hannity know-nothing Right, which sees every recognition of the limitations of American power – government power – as a "betrayal." This is surely a most unconservative – even anti-conservative – vision, a form of radicalism that resembles nothing so much as Trotskyism-turned-inside-out.
One of the big differences between Stalin and Trotsky was the former’s conception of "socialism in one country" – the idea that communism could survive only in the Soviet Union and its satellites, without inciting a world revolution. Trotsky, sticking to the orthodox Marxist-Leninist position, held that a world revolution was imperative, or else the Soviet Union was doomed to fail, encircled as it was by the hostile, capitalist West.
What the neocons did was simply switch allegiances from the old Soviet Union to the United States, taking their hotheaded Trotskyist temperament with them – and finally aspiring to lead a world revolution with the United States government at its head. When George W. Bush announced the launching of what he called a "global democratic revolution," he was merely echoing the neo-Trotskyist rhetoric of his closest advisers and the intellectual movement from which they sprang.
The prospects of that revolution grow dimmer by the day, but the idea lives on, as does neoconservatism. In the age of Obama, it takes on new forms – as I explained in my last column – but the essence remains the same: war, war, and yet more war, as far as the eye can see. That, in brief, is the program of the neoconservatives, and Kristol’s legacy for the ages.
http://original.antiwar.com/ju.....istol-rip/
Modern Republican proponents of unlimited state power and World Democratic Revolution truly believe these things to be "conservative", and are entirely oblivious to the radical leftist pedigree of such notions.
Ken (Old Texican| 9.21.09 @ 11:51AM
Alan
Probably you might want to begin thinking about your larger family. ie: our country.
(see puffer above). heh!
Gerrymander| 9.23.09 @ 2:22AM
Do you really think this is relevant at all? Is it still 1969? Not one dumbshit who reads this blog has ever heard of the sds.
ps, no. no, its not relevant. Let the pigfucker rot in hell with novak.
Alan Brooks| 9.23.09 @ 2:24AM
I like cock.
rent a car | 12.17.09 @ 3:41PM
Great article.
inchirieri masini | inchirieri masini